Source: San Francisco Chronicle/Hearst Newspapers via Getty Images / Getty
A racist tirade from Dilbert creator Scott Adams has prompted newspapers to drop the cartoon – and Elon Musk to jump to his defense.
During his Coffee with Scott Adams live stream on YouTube on Wednesday (February 22nd), Adams stated that there is “fixing” of the racial tension in the United States and that white people should live in segregated neighborhoods. “Just get the f–k away. Wherever you have to go, just get away because there’s no fixing this. This can’t be fixed,” he said.
The 65-year-old would bizarrely claim that he identified as Black in the past. Still, the controversial cartoonist and Trump supporter was “going to re-identify as white” as he didn’t “want to be a member of a hate group,” citing a Rasmussen survey showing that 53 percent of Black people agreed with the phrase “It’s okay to be white”, which has been deemed a hate slogan. He even cited an old segement from CNN’s Don Lemon to bolster his claims. Adams has been under fire for racist comments before as well as anti-vaxxer statements.
The abhorrent comments prompted the USA Today Network to issue a statement on Friday (February 24th) saying they “will no longer publish the ‘Dilbert’ comic due to the recent discriminatory comments by its creator.” That covers over 300 newspapers in the network. Other newspapers dropping the strip include The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, The San Antonio Express-News along with The Cleveland Plain Dealer and The Los Angeles Times as well as the New York Times which still carried it in its international edition.
The MLive Media Group issued an editor’s letter stating Adams ‘canceled’ himself after dropping Adams’ cartoon from its eight newspapers. The Cleveland Plain Dealer’s editor, Chris Quinn wrote a letter stating “This is not a difficult decision,” and rejected the idea that the consequences of Adams’ rants were “cancel culture”.
Adams declined interviews, but the furor prompted Twitter owner and billionaire Elon Musk to chime in and defend the controversial artist, asking “What exactly are they complaining about?” in a deleted tweet. He then wrote that
“The media is racist”, going on to claim that “they’re racist against whites & Asians” after being racist against “non-white people”.
